Thriving in Omni Channel: Unleashing Tech, Innovation, and Customer Magic
Guest: Vikram Saxena
From teaching Microsoft Office to pioneering in the eCommerce space, Vikram Saxena turned a coding hobby into BetterCommerce, revolutionizing retail with customizable, budget-friendly tech. His journey from a self-taught coder to CEO showcases a leap from corporate life to filling a critical gap with an API-first, LEGO-like approach for mid-market retailers. Now, he’s not just an entrepreneur; he's a visionary making eCommerce accessible, advocating for growth without the growing pains.
Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:
Thriving in Omni Channel: Unleashing Tech, Innovation, and Customer Magic
In today’s world of eCommerce, standing still is the same as moving backward. As businesses make their way through the complex maze of their digital surroundings, it is no longer a matter of strategy to be constantly evolving and attempting new innovations, but a simple case of staying alive. So, in this episode I chat with Vikram Saxena from Better Commerce about the foundation for omnichannel success.
The Fragrance Shop: A Beacon of Innovation
During hard times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, The Fragrance Shop showed a good amount of adaptability when they turned all of their stores into a warehouse for shipments. It was not the way retail was supposed to function, but it helped secure their survival. And it shows how having access to technology can completely switch a business model over night.
Membership: The Golden Key to Customer Retention
The idea of memberships with an eCommerce site is nothing new, but The Fragrance Shop has shown others how to utilise such rewards effectively. It is not only a way to earn loyalty for a customer but to create opportunities for more profits. It moves beyond profit making and turns it into something that is part of the customer’s lifestyle. It is a great lesson in the importance of making the customer feel valued and part of something.
Personalisation: The Fine Line Between Engaging and Intrusive
As we explore the principles of omnichannel success, we can see that personalisation is a huge part of it. And yet, it can easily turn customers off if not employed carefully. It’s all about using customer data to tailor their experience without stepping over the line (being creepy!). The importance of such a balancing act cannot be stressed enough.
The Omnichannel Imperative
At its core, omnichannel success is about seamless integration across all platforms, ensuring a unified and cohesive customer experience. It's about recognising that the customer's journey isn't linear but a web of interactions across various touchpoints. Embracing this complexity and using technology to weave these touchpoints together into a coherent narrative is where the magic lies. It's about creating a symphony from what could easily become cacophony, ensuring that each note, each interaction, contributes to a harmonious customer experience.
At the very heart of a successful omnichannel strategy is the integration of all platforms to provide a solid and consistent experience to the customer. With the understanding that the customer journey is not linear but more of a scattered spider web, businesses need to accept this complexity. Technology can be used to place these touchpoints into a coherent story. This is about taking what could have been noise and turning it into clear understanding, where every touchpoint makes a contribution to an overall customer experience.
In Conclusion
Looking into The Fragrance Shop’s journey gives us an idea of what innovations truly mean. They relate to innovation not being about tools and data, but about different ways of thinking and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. We also understand that earning customer loyalty involves more than just good products. It’s about connecting with that customer to provide them with a service that resonates on a personal level. And in personalisation, a fine line must be drawn between using the information you have on someone to enhance their experience and breaching their privacy.
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Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The eCommerce Podcast is all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that, today we are chatting with Vikram Saxena from BetterCommerce about all things Omnichannel. We're going to get into what Omnichannel eCommerce is.
As things currently stand in 2024 with the maestro himself, Vikram. So don't go anywhere, grab your notebooks, grab your pens, because you're going to want them. Now, if you are new to the show, if this is your first time with us, a very warm welcome to you. It's great that you're here on the show. Love the fact that it's still growing every week.
I'm still looking at the numbers going, oh my lord it's amazing what's going on. Warm, welcome to you. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast from because you know it's always good to stay connected, isn't it? And if you're feeling brave, if you're feeling like you can do it, and you've [00:01:00] gotta spare a few seconds in your day, head over to the website eCommerce podcast.net.
Just sign up for the newsletter because all that's gonna happen is every week we will email you the links, the show notes. Straight to your inbox. They come straight to your inbox without any hassle, without any drama. First time. It's a beautiful thing. And so you never miss all the good stuff that comes out of every episode.
So straight to you. So do check that out at ecommercepodcast. net. And whilst you're there, have a look, have a gander, maybe, at eCommerce Cohort. This show is brought to you by the wonderful eCommerce Cohort. That is our monthly mastermind group. You can be a part of it. Come join us. We're in there every month.
It'd be great to meet you and you can find out more information at eCommerceCohort. com if that's something that tickles your fancy. Now that's the show sponsor. Let's talk about today's guest, Mr. Vikram. Yes, from teaching Microsoft [00:02:00] Office, remember those days, to pioneering in eCommerce. Vikram turned a coding hobby into BetterCommerce, revolutionising retail with customisable, budget friendly tech.
His journey from a self taught coder to a CEO showcases a leap from corporate life Two filling a critical gap with an API first Lego. I love this Lego like approach for mid market retailers. Now he's not just an entrepreneur. Oh no, he's a visionary making eCommerce accessible advocating for growth without growing pains.
Love, love, love that. We are all advocating for eCommerce, which I think is why we're here, Vikram, but it's great to have you on the show, man. Thank you for joining me.
Vikram Saxena: Thank you so much, Matt. It's a pleasure being here. I've been hearing a few of the podcasts and it's absolutely amazing what you've got, what you're doing. It's just phenomenal.
Matt Edmundson: Oh, bless you. We enjoy it. We enjoy doing it. We get to meet awesome people like yourself. [00:03:00] What I liked about your bio what I, what made me smile when I was reading it is you are a self taught coder and it started out as a hobby and has now ended up as your business. And if I'm honest with you, that is exactly my story. I just started doing something for a hobby and it turns out it's now my career. Only I didn't build an eCommerce platform like you did with BetterCommerce. I just built my eCommerce empire, but it's good to,
Vikram Saxena: brilliant.
Matt Edmundson: yeah, it's good to share that, isn't it? It's good to have that in common.
How did you get started in coding? Did you just have a go one day or was it more intentional?
Vikram Saxena: No, actually, I was quite disillusioned when I was at the college stage and I had no idea what I was going to do. So a friend of mine suggested, there's this opportunity of getting a job to train people on Microsoft Office. I said, I've never seen it. He said, no worries. I've never even seen Microsoft Office and that was Microsoft Office 97.
Matt Edmundson: Wow.
Vikram Saxena: he said, no worries, you can talk really well. Why don't you just go and give an interview? Maybe they select you and [00:04:00] train you for it. I just went for the interview and they just selected me and three months I taught office. I still remember my first day I was standing there and I was teaching them things that I had never seen myself.
I was opening a menu, I was opening a menu, clicked on File New, it created a new file and I just repeated whatever it did on the screen.
Matt Edmundson: Wow.
Vikram Saxena: but within three months, I literally burned the midnight oil and somehow it just took my fancy that this is what I want to do in my life. Computers, that's what I wanted to do.
And then within three months, I got bored of Office, then next three months, I focused completely on the networking, hardware, assembling PCs, myself, Windows 95, installing, uninstalling, doing all of that networking bit as well. And then I got bored of that as well. And then I said, I want to become a programmer.
That was the next logical evolution. But everybody said, you don't have educational background, you don't have a degree in technology, you can't be. So [00:05:00] I said, fine, I picked up a book, which read Learn ASP in 24 hours and you may not believe, but I actually sat with that book for 48 hours from page one to page last.
And those two days were the enlightening part for my life. And I said, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And that was the beginning. That's it.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. I love that. Your little Damascus road experience ASP in 24 hours. I started in I started creating coding websites in 1997. So as you're teaching office, and in my head, Vikram, I'm showing my age slightly. I think we both are by talking about Office 97. Was that the one with the little paper clip in the
Vikram Saxena: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the one. Yeah. Indeed it was. It was. Yeah, my, my first, yeah, my first rendezvous with the computers. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: I was still using PCs back then as well. It wasn't until later I became, a [00:06:00] Mac fanboy, but yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, so I started coding websites in 1997. Got married in 98, one of the first websites I did was our wedding website, and it's funny I, like you, I got bored with a few things along the way and yet here I am.
I didn't learn ASP I learnt PHP because it felt like it was slightly easier to get
Vikram Saxena: Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: I took the easy road, Vikram, I took the easy road. Yeah,
Vikram Saxena: of us survived and both the technologies have still survived, in some form or shape.
Matt Edmundson: you do much coding now? I do
Vikram Saxena: I still do. I, yeah, I know I'm completely hands on actually. I still spend my weekends learning new stuff, practicing new technologies, writing codes for some new solutions. I've built a solution over the weekends over the last six months, which basically automates the process across all software organization.
And it's not just project management, it's across team, project, infrastructure, assignment, allocation, everything. And all of that I've done over the [00:07:00] weekends all by myself.
Matt Edmundson: Wow. Keeps you busy then. I, unlike you I, we took on some a young chap called Mark Jackson. He came to us fresh out of university. He's still with us, Mark. This is years ago. I don't quite remember how many years ago now, a long time ago. Mark came and joined us fresh out of university.
He had a degree in electronic engineering and I taught him everything I knew about coding. It took about 20 minutes and then and then he took it over really. And so now he's a director of all things technical and the.
Vikram Saxena: Brilliant.
Matt Edmundson: The skill level now in coding is just something else. Compared to what it was when I was writing, when I wrote the first eCommerce website, it's chalk and cheese. So I still get the basics.
I still get the fundamentals, but yeah it's way beyond my, I'd have to, I'd probably have to spend six months trying to catch up now. My son, my eldest son is actually a much better programmer than I am. And
Vikram Saxena: very good. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: yeah I, unlike, so unlike you I, I [00:08:00] do miss it. The coding aspect of it.
So how come you decided to write BetterCommerce then? What was the story behind that?
Vikram Saxena: So basically, in 98, I started off one year was primarily into corporate trainings, and then I moved on into the programming world. So about 10 years, I stayed in the corporate world, working for companies across Europe, and I lived in Germany for about three years, worked for a very large enterprise business.
And then I learned a lot of new things, how to build platforms at scale, when you are, and at the time when we built that platform back in 2004, it was much bigger than Amazon at the time. It was a B2B web store, but it was much more in terms of revenue and volume that than Amazon that was doing at the time.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: And then when I quit back in 2007, I started my own IT services business, and I was very happy doing it because I wanted freedom. I wanted freedom. I'm not cut out for corporate bureaucracy and, all of that [00:09:00] repetitivism around. So I wanted to build something of my own and have a much more friendly culture and environment.
So 2007 is when I quit and I started on my own. So I had been doing a lot of IT services business and we did a huge project. We built a platform for a company called Tech Data back in 2011- 2012.
Which basically brought all the software giants of the world in one place. So if you remember back in the day, if you wanted to buy a software, you would probably walk to PC World, pick up a box, and that box would have a CD and a license key. So we built a platform which would eliminate all of that. Now, if you think about the logistics behind that box, what you were doing, what the behind the box was happening, was basically PC World was buying that box as a proper goods. from the distributor. Distributor was sourcing it from the manufacturers, which is the software vendors.
And it was all being shipped, right? So we built a platform to eliminate all of that and make it completely digital and [00:10:00] just in time. And at the time it was called Electronic Software Delivery. So we built a digital vault, which would store software license keys from hundreds of vendors in the world.
Across Europe, U. S. and everywhere and even today that platform is very much in use. So if you go to Curry's website and you buy an Xbox or Office or Adobe or Symantec, you're basically using the platform that we built because even Curry's uses our platform in the
Matt Edmundson: Oh wow.
Vikram Saxena: Yeah, so like Curry's across Europe, you pick up any giant retailer, if you're buying software, chances are you're probably using the platform that we built for them.
So that gave us the confidence of, doing something at a very large scale and we were doing some eCommerce websites and what we found was, that the eCommerce websites or the platforms available around the time, they were either, Shopify is of course brilliant and to get started off, my exposure has primarily been into mid to large scale businesses rather than [00:11:00] people who are just starting off eCommerce or starting off their business.
So we realized that the options available were either Magento or, Salesforce or Demandware back in the day, which became Salesforce later on, or, Hybris probably started off. And what we found was that these were very complicated to set up. These were very difficult to, configure, and you needed pretty much an army to get them up and running on the life cycles of implementation was around 24 months, 18 months, and the budgets ran into a couple of millions.
Coming from that enterprise background, but having that agile approach to everything and simplifying things, we said, we want to build a midway between Shopify and Demandware, which basically offers your enterprise grade capabilities and scale. without burning a hole in your pocket and without burning a couple of million dollars.
So that was the reasoning behind it. Plus, when we started to build it, what we also found was that, people had to go through. So for example, if you are building an eCommerce business, you would probably [00:12:00] need something to manage your product data. That's where your PIM comes into play.
And then you need something from an order management perspective. And then there are these OMS providers and then you have WMS providers and then you have analytics. And before you realize, you probably, from a primary stack perspective, you need 10 different softwares to build them together, to build an end to end stack.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: Forget about 50 or 70 plugins that you drop on your Shopify website for just getting the basic run.
Forget about those. And what is the trade off behind that? I don't even want to go there because it just slows down your website, in a difficult ways that you can resolve. So we said, we started building with PIM then gradually built an OMS for the businesses who did not want to, go for a full large scale, which didn't have a very large scale ERP budgets and all of that.
So we said, we'll build a smaller OMS, a smaller WMS with some WMS capabilities as well. And we will offer them the analytics. So the idea [00:13:00] was that we will build these as Lego blocks. And that's where this comes from, that when we offer a solution, we don't just say, you take the whole thing or just, do something else.
We say, start your own journey. And if your problem is product data management, I'm Try to use our PIM and then see how it goes. And our PIM will potentially work with whatever platform that you today are on. So that's how we started off. And that was the thesis and philosophy behind building this platform and being hands on and being very business savvy as well from the perspective of business processes.
I knew where can we cut down a lot of flab, where can we make this simple. And I've always believed, complexity is very easy to do. the simplicity.
Matt Edmundson: true yeah.
Vikram Saxena: It's the simplicity which takes a lot of time to build and create something.
Matt Edmundson: No, I totally agree. The, you totally was it, Steve Jobs said something about that, didn't he? About simplicity being the hardest thing in the world to do or [00:14:00] something like that. But it's I totally agree with you. Complexity is so easy to do. So you've got this platform, then you've got BetterCommerce which is if you've never come across it it's like you say, it's a sort of a.
A step up in a lot of ways from Shopify as a platform. You've got some big name clients, we were talking about this before we hit the record button. You've got Fragrance Shop, which is a large retail chain of fragrance stores here in the UK. So the client that I immediately recognized when I was looking at your website So you're obviously, Fragrance Shop own bricks and mortar stores.
They've got their online stuff. So you've obviously got a great deal of experience then trying to get the omni channel thing to work, which is, what we're talking about here. So. How do, with what you know about Omnichannel and where it's come from the last, five years or so, and probably accelerated slightly with COVID, but what's the state of Omnichannel as things currently lie in 2024?
Vikram Saxena: I think to be honest, a lot of businesses are still [00:15:00] struggling with the basics. Today there's so much of hype and buzz around the AI, but I think people have forgotten that a lot of basics are still missing. A lot of businesses still struggle to get their basics in terms of, they have different systems which have the store related customer data and they have different systems where their online customers are sitting.
Getting them together, they have a pipeline which runs probably once a day or once a week or different frequency and that also breaks often,
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: which I think Is a much bigger problem than bringing new buzzwords. Of course, every CEO and every CTO wants to add those buzzwords to their profile, to their business, from a market perception perspective, but from offering value to the customer, a lot of businesses are still struggling with that.
And the primary reason behind that is. Every technology provider, their solutions sold in that name without much substance behind it. [00:16:00] And no offense to anybody, but a lot of solutions are driven value delivered to the business.
Matt Edmundson: Sorry, Vikram, you just broke up slightly and your camera's frozen. Just repeat that last part again.
Vikram Saxena: Yeah. So what I meant was, a lot of solutions are driven more by the sales oriented numbers and presentations. I think the actual business value delivered by them in the proof.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: And I think there is still a lot of work to be done by a lot of businesses in the area of omnichannel, to actually become properly omnichannel.
Matt Edmundson: what do you mean what kind of work needs to be done, do you think?
Vikram Saxena: I think bringing it all together is still a bit of a challenge for a lot of businesses because they tend to have a lot of departments and then I'll give you a small you know a narrative we are only so as a consumer when you are shopping you know when you are in the tube or when you're [00:17:00] walking, you're probably looking at a website on your mobile, right?
Then you happen to get to your office, you will probably open up your laptop and probably open up the website there as well. Maybe, if you were willing to buy, I still struggle to put in my card details in my phone. Of course, today's generation is different, but sometimes I'm still more comfortable of entering my card details into the laptop rather than on my mobile phone a lot of times, especially when I'm moving or I'm on mobile or somewhere outside.
And then, you will potentially go to the store as well. And you will know at the end of it, you're probably going through all these three different channels of the same brand. But you may be just buying it from the store. Now a lot of businesses, what they do is they treat each of these as a separate channel and there are different people responsible for each channel and a lot of times there's a competition set between these channels.
Okay, my store revenue is this much, 10 percent more or my online revenue is this much or my mobile app revenue is this much. [00:18:00] Instead of competing with each other, they need to start feeding and nurturing the customer journey across the board. So there's a bit of a paradigm shift more than technology solutions are of course one part of it, but I think there's a significant element of mindset and a paradigm that has to be brought in that consumer does not differentiate between channels when they are interacting with your brand.
Why should you?
Matt Edmundson: right, it's a very good question, isn't it? So why do why do companies still do that? Why do we differentiate across channels like that?
Vikram Saxena: I think a lot of times we're looking for people. So we make people accountable to drive business for one channel. And of course. And there's a lot of pressure that comes from the top, but they don't realize that there's always going to be an overlap. The journey may have, and this again goes back to the same problem that has been there for ages.
Where do you give the attribution for the sale?
Did that attribution. Now this is where, you [00:19:00] potentially, your omni channel, if you do the omni channel right, you can get a little bit of sense of it. Now it is still quite vast, but you can still make a little bit of sense of it. Now, how would you make sense of it is, for example, if you implement the right level of CDP, which is basically your customer data platform, capturing their event history from.
Web, mobile app. And then if they make the eventual purchase from the store, and if you're capturing their mobile number, you can basically merge it all together into one single customer and single order, bring it all together. And that data at an aggregate level gives you a much better picture of how many people are interacting with your brand in which channels and which channels are.
generating more sales and how are they actually driving to that? Now, they may have looked at a different product on the web, but they may have bought something else when they went to the store,
Matt Edmundson: It's an
Vikram Saxena: idea [00:20:00] is
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, sorry, you just froze there for a little second, but it's interesting, isn't it, that consumers, and this was something actually, we talked about this with Neil Hoynes, the chief data strategist from Google. He was on the show recently talking about a similar thing, Vikram, is in the sense that people are not linear, right?
Your customer's not linear. They don't go from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. As much as we'd like to think that's the customer journey and we can. We can draw that out on a whiteboard, it's not actually the case, right? It's like a jumbled ball of wire where everything's all a mash of things, right?
Is that what you're finding?
Vikram Saxena: yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I think the secret lies somewhere in trying to get a little bit of patterns out of it. The amount of interactions that they have had with your brand, irrespective of the touch point. And if you start bringing that together and tying them into the sales, that helps you build that connection with them better and add a little bit of [00:21:00] stickiness to your business.
For example, what we've done with Fragrance Shop and I'm, I'm, they're absolutely a phenomenal brand. Now, if you imagine they have about 250 stores across the country and despite all the COVID and everything, their year on year was just Minus 1% through the whole period. And how did that happen?
What we did was we built a solution for them that would enable their stores to become mini fulfillment centers during the COVID period.
And that solution was developed and delivered to them within two to three weeks
Matt Edmundson: yeah,
Vikram Saxena: So that unlocked a huge amount of inventory for them. Because eventually, the online sales are all driven by inventory. If you are king, if you have the inventory, now typically your online businesses would only reflect the inventory that is sitting in your big warehouses. Whereas you have those mini stores and a lot of times you would say click and collect is fine. But what about using them as [00:22:00] your fulfillment centers?
And they thought about it right and well done, good time. We built a solution, really a quick one. And the beauty of this is where the beauty of headless comes into play when your solution is all API driven.
You can just build anything as a front end on top of it
Matt Edmundson: Yeah,
Vikram Saxena: without trying to reinvent any logic or anything around that. We just built that. And they unlocked a huge amount of inventory. They increased their sales volumes and they came out of COVID pretty much almost unaffected. And if you look at the results that they've declared last year, their sales have grown 28%.
Matt Edmundson: yeah,
Vikram Saxena: It's all in public domain.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah,
Vikram Saxena: People say high street is dying and fragrance shop is constantly thriving, which I mean, makes me immensely proud. And the guy who drives it, I know him personally as well. It's he's absolutely a dynamo from that perspective. His sense of business is absolutely phenomenal.
And he catches the pulse. If you look at it, if you wanted to buy a [00:23:00] perfume, you would probably go any website and these are, this is such a commoditized product
You could buy it anywhere. You will do a price comparison and you can buy it anywhere. But despite all of that, their sales are constantly growing. 28 percent in this day and age, year on year growth is absolutely phenomenal.
Matt Edmundson: it is when you're already as big as they are, right? And that's the, that's a phenomenal thing. I love this idea of the mini, warehouse, like each store becomes a sort of a mini warehouse. One of the things that I was that I saw some companies doing well and other companies not doing so well during COVID, like I said to, the corner shop down the bottom of the road.
He obviously has his, he has his shelves full of goods, not as much as, say, the big supermarkets like Asda or Tesco here in the UK, but he had some stock and he had a captive audience, in a lot of ways because people were around, and it was like, the ones I saw do really well were like, actually what I can do is I can put all of our stuff that's in the shop online, people can [00:24:00] order their shopping, they can click and collect.
Or, we can do a free delivery if they live within 500 metres of the shop, and the guy would just literally walk around, with a trolley and the bags, dropping them off for different customers. And it's very different for him now in a lot of ways, but having that small warehouse mindset, and actually we are a store.
We can do click and collect and we can do local delivery. I saw that unlock a lot of things for people over COVID. It was one of the things that sort of came out of it, which no one was, I didn't, I, it's not something that we were all expecting or thinking about, in eCommerce. And actually when you looked at it, you're like, restaurants who did the same thing, here's our menu, come click and collect, or doing local delivery.
It, just merging their business with the online world in a way that, and I think here's the success thing for me is when it comes to Omnichannel, you've got to do it in a way that makes sense for the customer, right?
Vikram Saxena: Absolutely.
Matt Edmundson: and if you can do that, which is what the fragrance [00:25:00] store has done, I think you can win every time.
What are some of the other things that you've seen work well with Omnichannel? I'm really curious because obviously you've been dealing with this a lot.
Vikram Saxena: Yeah. So I think one more thing that has worked really wonders for the business, especially in last few years. So we had built a capability called membership. Everybody knows Prime membership, Amazon Prime is the biggest example of a membership model, where you basically pay for that membership.
And you get, free shipping next day or things, so many elements. And there's of course the video content is another. Side benefit of it. But their primary goal is not the video content, its primary goal is to get you to the store and shop
Matt Edmundson: Yep.
Vikram Saxena: and more. And I think fragrance shop, again, innovated in that area.
So we built a membership model capability in the platform, which they used to the hilt. And they offer three levels of membership and they sell these memberships, not just online. They sell these memberships when people walk into the stores
Matt Edmundson: Okay.
Vikram Saxena: and all of this is [00:26:00] done through our platform. And the beauty of this is now they have a store infrastructure, which is probably quite, nobody would want to change the store infrastructure, which is across 250 stores.
That's a huge project in itself. You don't know just the hardware itself. So we didn't want to touch any of those elements. And now this is where, again, the beauty of the headless or the API first approach comes into play. Because we built it in a way that their store, so what they did was they, their store software then it essentially uses our membership module and starts to sell those membership capability to the customers who are walking in.
And the beauty is the moment you buy that membership, you instantly get 20 percent discount. So you are buying a fragrance, let's say Chanel for 70 quid. And now you, somebody tells you, if you pay just another 10 quid, 20 quid are automatically going to come off.
Matt Edmundson: Yep.
Vikram Saxena: 20 percent is automatically going to go off.
Plus you will get additional 20 percent vouchers for your next two sales. for your next two purchases. Yeah, [00:27:00] absolutely. Good. So customer buys it and that then brings in a huge amount of cascading effect, a domino's effect. So you have unlocked a revenue stream, a recurring revenue stream, which never existed, right?
It's a brand new revenue stream in a business model, which you, not a lot of people would have thought about. Secondly, you built the customer loyalty. Customer's not going anywhere now.
Matt Edmundson: Yep.
Vikram Saxena: And this model,
Matt Edmundson: yeah, sorry. Go ahead.
Vikram Saxena: and this model, I think has shown phenomenal success in just last two years. The volume of paid members, and these are all paid members, so people buy these memberships.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: And they sell it, I think it's on their website. They sell it for 15 quid, 25 quid and 35 quid or 45 quid. So there are three tiers of it.
And what we've also seen is a lot of times people buy the first time [00:28:00] 15 quid. And then they eventually upgrade to 45 quid and it's an annual thing.
Matt Edmundson: it's powerful, isn't it? We've had Chris George on the show and a few others talking about subscriptions, talking about memberships. There's a big show in Dallas in June called SubSummit, a big show all to do with subscriptions and memberships, which actually I'm yeah, to small plug, I'm going to be there.
We're going to be doing a live eCommerce podcast stuff there on parts and panels and stuff over there. And I really like Subsummit and I'm really curious by what they're now calling subscription commerce and how that has morphed into now membership commerce and how memberships. like levels.
So I've just done a workshop for eCommerce Cohort a sort of mastermind group. And we talked about the three levels of retention, the sort of the basic level, which most people do level one, which is a sort of a more advanced level, I supposed. Is when you move, you transition your business from a [00:29:00] straightforward eCommerce business into a subscription based eCommerce business.
And then there's another level of, again, another, another place to go deeper, which is membership commerce, which is really exciting, I think at the moment. And there aren't that many companies who are doing the membership eCommerce model. I think it's still less than like a few percent, less than 5%, I think last time I heard.
And there's some insane opportunities here because like you say, you look at Amazon Prime and you, the, one of the key reasons Amazon has been so successful is because we all buy Amazon Prime membership. Incredible business model that works off something called the sunk cost fallacy, which is something you should actually get your head around.
If you don't know about that, go and research sunk cost fallacy because it's how members, why memberships work. And in terms of, bringing around that loyalty, I think it's really clever. So the fact that the fragrance shop are doing this now I think is really fascinating and making that work in an omnichannel approach is blindingly [00:30:00] clever.
I think, and it's, I can see why they're now getting that growth because their membership structure, I imagine, is going to catapult them further and further. I'd love to talk to the guys that decided to do this. I wonder whether they listening to you talk about it, whether they've actually priced it slightly too cheaply.
I wonder if they wanted to maybe be a bit braver at the start. I don't know. I'd be really curious,
Vikram Saxena: yeah. And of course, and I was on the board of Fragrance Shop as well at some point, when we started off. So at the time in the discussions as well. That we were talking about where should we price it and the idea was to, because this was a completely unheard concept at the time when we started off and especially in such a commoditized space, if there's nothing unique, they're a multi brand retailer, they're not even producing that product, right?
So they're just trading into that product. So the idea was how do we differentiate and why do we charge? What is the value proposition? How should we start? So there were different surveys that were done around that as well to get to this pricing. And of [00:31:00] course, I can. Pass on your message and see if they are interested and they can, of course, come back to you. on that front. But yeah, it's been fascinating. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: to know. The thing that I've, the thing that I've learned about all of this, Vikram, with the membership commerce, because we're about to launch a new eCommerce site, a new brand of beauty product, which is going to be a membership. Driven sites. I don't know. We're not the first beauty brands to do this.
We're going to, the main sale in effect is the membership. And we've priced it quite high, so it's gonna be like a hundred bucks a year to be a member of the site. And what I've learned is and time will tell. When we launch it, I'll let you know. I'll keep everyone updated.
But the thing that I've learned in all of this is. You've got to offer at least three times the value of the membership, and if you do that, it becomes a no brainer. I can charge 100 membership if I offer 300 worth of value for signing up. And as long as you do that I think you'll do quite well.
Because like you say, once you, once somebody is a member [00:32:00] You then lose all the competition, don't you, because they're paying their membership. They're gonna keep coming back to you.
Vikram Saxena: It has a very huge domino effect, if you may call it because they're just going to come and a repeat value that it brings to your business is just absolutely phenomenal.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: And if you can start, capitalizing on that data, it just becomes even much more richer. Then you can see how many people are upgrading their membership at what juncture are they upgrading it.
And one huge, another element that you would have seen, if you I'm sure Black Friday is huge. Now, if you remember Black Friday used to be pretty much one day Black Friday, right? And then the boxing day. So ever since this membership has come into play, Black Friday has almost become like a two month season for them.
It's not just one day anymore because they don't do flash sales anymore. Those flash sales are now restricted to members.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: So that's another way. And if you look at it, [00:33:00] it's a very interesting way you get discounts when you become a member. To become a member, you spend money. So it's a very interesting.
Circle that goes in and you just get hooked onto it.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, you do. Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: And you somehow manage to break free from that discount oriented business because discount oriented business is good to get your customers on board, but sustainability becomes a bit of a challenge in the long run.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah, you're totally right. Totally it's a, it is brilliant and I Vikram, I've really enjoyed talking about this. So you omnichannel, right? If I'm just starting out in e-commerce, I get how, if I am the fragrance shop and I've got 250 stores around the UK I need to be thinking about omnichannel, right?
And I get that. If I'm just starting out but I have a brick and mortar store, and I'm not just being online only, but I've got a brick and mortar store
how does it make sense for me to start thinking about this, if that makes sense, what [00:34:00] about the, can I call them the little guy in a non disparaging way, but do you know what I mean the person where it's
Vikram Saxena: I understand. Yeah, it's been, it's just one or two stores, potentially. And we come across quite a few of them as well, who have got just one or two stores, but they are still decent size. They're not, you know very small, but now they're competing with the likes of the online world. So they struggle from that perspective.
And I can really get that. So for them also, I think, you can say whether it makes sense for me or not is not the right question. The right question is when should I really go for it? Because it makes sense for everybody.
Matt Edmundson: Okay. So when should I go for it? I love that
Vikram Saxena: The moment, you want to start building customer loyalty and add that, personalization element to it as well without getting creepy. Now, for example, you know what we've done now, personalization, this is a very important clause that I always add, please ensure that you're not getting to the
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.[00:35:00]
Vikram Saxena: Because that puts people off,
Matt Edmundson: yep,
Vikram Saxena: a lot of times when you're talking about something and you see an ad, something similar to that on Facebook, it's just unbelievably creepy and you just hate it at that moment.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, you do.
Vikram Saxena: So coming back to the topic, basically what we did with Fragrance Shop right at the beginning when we started off their omni channel solution, so we were capturing significant amount of data from what, just like Google Analytics, we had built a event hub system, which basically captures the complete event stream of what customer does on your website.
Matt Edmundson: Yep.
Vikram Saxena: Now, that event stream, when we start putting together in conjunction with, now whenever the customer comes and buys from them, they capture their phone number. Now when you do e receipts, typically customer will give you their email or phone number. So we tie up that information from a customer identity perspective.
And whether it's mobile, web, or store. Now we've got the customer identity sorted out more or less.
Matt Edmundson: Yep.
Vikram Saxena: And we can also do it from a retrospective perspective. Let's say, [00:36:00] somebody came onto the website seven times before they actually made a purchase. So we could actually tie it back to the first time that they came in because we log everything on that perspective.
And all of that goes against the customer history. Now customer may have created a ticket in let's say Zendesk or whatever ticketing system that you may be using. All of that also comes in there. They may have posted a review for you on Trustpilot or FIFO. That also we pull and bring it all together in that one single customer profile.
Now the moment, now if you look at it, the amount of data that is sitting across the globe and across the internet of your brand, it's just phenomenal. The moment you bring it all together, it starts to make sense and it gives you a little bit of sense of customers. Now the way Fragrance Shop utilizes, and I think every store should potentially do that, is Basically, what they did the moment customer gave their phone numbers, I can see that you've been buying from us quite a lot.
We are happy to offer you a 5 percent discount. So they started schemes initially when the membership wasn't there, [00:37:00] or, there's this new launch of product Chanel that you bought last time. We've now got a new version of that. So these things, and when you get accessibility of that data right in there, at, in the hands of the people.
Who are interacting with the customer face to face that just makes a huge difference.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: course that requires a little bit of training as to, what level of conversation you should be having in terms of what level of information you should be sharing with the customer that you know about them.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. , that's a whole other episode right there. Vikram. I'm not gonna lie.
Vikram Saxena: Yes. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: A whole other episode. When should I go for it? It's a great question and I love how this applies to folks who are just starting out I love how this applies to the fragrance shop and I love how this applies to everybody in between Vikram, listen, I've loved talking to you, man, and people watching the [00:38:00] video, I'm sorry, your video froze for quite a lot of it, but we could hear you just fine, which has been great. If people want to reach out, if they want to find out more about BetterCommerce, about some of the stuff that you do, what's a good way to do that?
Vikram Saxena: So they can reach out to us on Twitter. That's BetterCommerce_ they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm searchable very easily on LinkedIn by vikramsaxena. They can also reach out on my email. That's vikram@bettercommerce.io
Matt Edmundson: very good. Very good. We will, of course, put all of those links in the show notes. Now, Vikram, I have two more questions before we wrap this up. Question number one, you've used this, you've used the phrase a lot, and I'm curious. I wonder if you could just explain it a little bit, what you mean, just for those that might not know.
And that's the phrase Headless Commerce or Headless eCommerce. What do you mean by that phrase?
Vikram Saxena: So headless commerce, what it means in a very layman term. So today, a few years ago, if you ask me In simpler terms, from a [00:39:00] technology perspective itself, let's say earlier, the way we were building our solutions, they were more like there's a server and there's a client. Now client is typically, and then there is a browser, which is basically accessing that client as well.
Now, sorry, client is your browser. Now, if you look at it, how the devices and the form factors have evolved over a period of time, right? Earlier, the only channel was website. So people just build solutions, which were sitting on a server, and they would be rendered on the browser itself.
Now, over a period of time, what has happened is you've got mobile devices, you've got Apple TVs and fire stakes and all of that.
So your form factors have just multiplied in the forms and shapes that we had, none of us had ever imagined. And it's almost like living through a sci fi film like we used to see in the likes of Minority Report.
Matt Edmundson: True. So true. Yeah.
Vikram Saxena: Yeah. So now what has happened is now if I wanted to incorporate the similar elements, now I was offering I had a promotion in them, hypothetically.
And I was offering 10 percent [00:40:00] and all the logic for promotion engine was built into my website. Now if I wanted to do the same thing on my mobile app, I would have to incorporate almost similar stuff into my mobile app technology as
Now if I was building an app for my Apple TV or Fire Stick, I would have to build it again. Now instead of doing all of that, what Headless did was took all the complication and all the logic. On the server side and created another lightweight layer, which became your presentation layer and presentation layer pretty much is dependent upon the form factor. So then you build something specific to that form factor without hard coding or without putting any logic in there. Yeah. Now this form of technology or this approach has always existed. Basically, what you're sitting on the backend is primarily API, which would just take plain data and return data structures. This [00:41:00] has always been there, I've been writing code with APIs. We built a system back in 2003 with API first approach, but it wasn't called headless at the time.
And then gradually, of course, there is a lot of engine that went behind it. And then gradually this word was coined, I think back in 2013, 2014, when it became quite a bit of a buzzword. Driven by marketing, but essentially I think it's primarily just API driven architectures. And all the logic and complications sitting in the APIs, then your front end or your front end of presentation layer is a lightweight presentation designed for the specific form factor that you're targeting or your consumers are using.
I hope I have not got too technical and it's a simple enough.
Matt Edmundson: No, I get it. It's, in effect, what you're saying is the server does the work and it will, it's a lightweight display mechanism, whether you're using a mobile, whether you're using a laptop, whether you're using Apple TV, it just seamlessly works now. And it's a, it's much, the other thing about headless commerce is actually, it's in [00:42:00] some respects, it's much faster and lightweight to, to develop in as well, isn't it?
Which enables you to. Do things like, in a matter of weeks, create a system whereby all of your shops become mini warehouses and stuff like that. There's a lot of advantages to it, right? A lot of advantages.
Vikram Saxena: Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: No, thank you for that. My second question, my final question, we are starting this brand new feature.
Okay, so Vikram, you're actually the first person, you're the guinea pig in this whole thing. You get to be the first. I don't know if that's a good thing or whether that's a bad thing, but
Vikram Saxena: I love being a guinea pig. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: we are doing this thing where I live stream I'm going to start live streaming on the eCommerce Podcast Instagram channel.
And one of the things that I will be live streaming is Matt's Q& A. So I get to answer, so I need from you a question that I can answer on that live stream. And I'm going to record you, I'll play the recording of you asking the question and then I'm going to answer it. So I need it, what's one question from you for me [00:43:00] that I can answer on that, does that make sense if I worded that well?
I hope I have. Okay, good.
Vikram Saxena: I need to ask you a question that you want to answer on. Instagram
Matt Edmundson: Exactly. And don't, be kind.
Vikram Saxena: did you mean don't be kind or
Matt Edmundson: No be kind. Yeah. Don't ask me, don't ask me like how do you, I don't know. I've got to answer it in 60 seconds in a lot of ways, but yeah, be kind.
Vikram Saxena: No worries. I'm gonna ask you the most talked about subject that is today. What do you think is gonna happen to the AI and how do you think that is gonna shape the world of e-commerce in the coming years?
Matt Edmundson: Very good. Okay, so if you want to listen to me rabbit on about AI and eCommerce, make sure you follow us on our Instagram channel, our brand new, we're slow to put the party here, we've been doing the eCommerce Podcast five years, we have literally just launched or started to launch our Instagram channel, a little bit behind, but do follow [00:44:00] us on Instagram at eCommerce Podcast and yeah, I'll be answering the question on there.
Vikram, listen. Absolute legend man, really appreciate you coming on to the show and and talking about what you guys are doing, talking about Headless Commerce and and just some of the ideas that you guys have been playing with the with the fragrance shop has just been absolutely brilliant and yeah, I've got pages of notes which is always a good sign, so super huge thanks my friend, it's been an absolute blessed.
Vikram Saxena: Thank you so much, Matt. It's been absolute pleasure and delight to talk to you.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Just a reminder again we will of course link to Vikram's info in the show notes, which you can get for free along with the transcript on our website ecommercepodcast. net and of course if you sign up to the newsletter which I talked about at the start, you will have that coming straight to your inbox.
Totally free, totally no dramas whatsoever. It's going to be coming straight to you. So there you go, a huge thanks to Vikram for joining me today. If you haven't done so already, do check out The [00:45:00] eCommerce cohort, the sponsors of this show because I am sure they would it's, they me we're part of it.
I'm sure they would love to hear from you. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you follow the eCommerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got yet more great conversations lined up. And I don't want you to miss. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first.
You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you've got to bear. Vikram has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. It's just the way it is. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by PodJunction, the new name for Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favourite podcast app.
The wonderful team that makes this show possible is the fabulous Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme music was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I said, you can find the transcript and show notes on the website at eCommercePodcast. net. But that's it from me, that's it from Vikram. Thank you so [00:46:00] much for joining us.
Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
